A communication device, such as a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU), may communicate with a remote device via a communication system. The WTRU may be configured to perform machine-to-machine (M2M) or machine-type communications (MTC), which are communications that may be performed without human interaction. This form of communications may have applications in smart metering, home automation, eHealth, fleet management, and other similar environments.
It may be desirable to improve the service coverage of a device or type of device, (for example, a long term evolution (LTE) or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) device), such as a low-cost MTC device by, for example, up to a number of dB, (for example, 20 dB), as compared to the LTE cell coverage defined for devices other than the low-cost MTC devices. In this case, the requirements for throughput and latency may be relaxed. For example, message size may be limited, such as on the order of a maximum of 100 bytes per message in the uplink (UL) and/or 20 bytes per message in the downlink (DL). In another example, latency may be relaxed so as to allow up to 10 seconds for the DL and/or up to an hour for the UL. Such relaxation of requirements may preclude support for certain services, such as voice.